Most walls with ground support, including fence walls, look fine when just installed. However, many tilt, sag, and crack as time passes and the underlying support shifts slightly under the weight of the materials used. There is a need for a more durable structure, and some innovators have made related contributions. Russo in U.S. Pat. No. 3,869,109 discloses I-beam posts with hardware to retain his frame members. Totten in U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,919 teaches hollow I-beam posts with interlocking hollow rails filled with plastic. Kavanaugh in U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,962 discloses a wall made by affixing plasterboard to the exterior of aligned flanges (perforated) of metal I-beams, and spraying plastic foam to coat the flange-adjacent surface of such board and to fill in until flush, and finally coats the exterior with adhesive and then with stucco. Those approaches fail to provide the combination of features that my invention offers.
The present inventor's foregoing patent applications disclose fence walls comprising upright metal posts and intervening panels of lightweight foamed plastic, preferably reinforced with component horizontal channel-shaped members and coated with protective compositions, and optionally faced with brick or other decorative materials. Such walls have proved their durability in actual use notwithstanding their exposure to weather. The present invention extends similar post-and-panel construction to building walls, especially--but not necessarily only--to exterior or other usually load-bearing walls.